Pat Rollins: Time to get back into the woods

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Posted Nov. 6, 2012 at 3:15 AM

Posted Nov. 6, 2012 at 3:15 AM

When I was talking to Mike about the prospects for black powder season he didn’t seem very optimistic. He told me that after all the scouting he’d done this summer, all the deer he’d seen during the early part of the archery season and all the whitetails that he’d captured on his trail cameras during the last few months, he didn’t have a clue where he was going to hunt. In the last three weeks he hadn’t seen a single deer from the tree stand and hadn’t really seen much fresh sign. I had to remind him that with all the food in the woods this year, I thought he needed abandon his strategy of hunting near field edges and get back in the woods.

“You saw the pictures I got on the trail camera?’ he said. “I’m set up right where I took those pictures of two monster bucks!”

“Yeah ... but those bucks were using that clover field in August when the grass was lush and green and the acorns and apples hadn’t begun to fall,” I reminded him. “You’ve scouted that big piece of woods behind those fields, it’s loaded with big oak trees and there are apple trees scattered all across that ridge and they’re all loaded with fruit and nuts. Those deer just don’t have a reason to come out to the fields any more.”

He knew I was right, however, he seemed to want to cling onto the hope that one of those bucks he’d captured countless times on the trail camera would venture down that deer trail one more time, offering him an opportunity from a tree stand he’d set out in early September. Time and time again he pulled out that stack of photos and showed me their racks.

“Maybe once the rut gets rolling they’ll come back to check those fields for does?” he asked.

“You know those does are going to be where the food is,” I replied. “Right now the food is back on that ridge where all those oak trees and apple trees are. I’d be willing to bet if you got out there and still hunted along that ridge, you’d stand a good chance of running into a scrape line too.”

I reminded Mike that the last time we had so many acorns and apples on the ground in areas we hunt, we stopped seeing deer in the fields as soon as they began dropping from the trees.

“I headed out an hour before daylight on opening day just so I’d have enough time to hike back to that little gully between the ridges before it got light,” I recalled.

I’d taken the time to scout there the weekend before and discovered a ton of fresh sign. I set out a couple marker ribbons to help me find the spot in the dark and by daybreak on opening day, I was set up in a ground blind overlooking several big oak trees near the gully.

Shortly after sunrise four deer passed within a hundred yards of the stand. They were in some thick brush and even though they were just milling around, none of them presented a clear shot opportunity.

I sat tight and about twenty minutes later I heard something walking in the leaves in the same direction the deer had disappeared. Moments later I spotted a big doe walking through a small patch of hardwoods. When the deer stepped out into an opening only fifty yards away presenting the perfect shot, I didn’t hesitate to fill my tag.

“I know your right,” Mike said. “I remember that year we hunted together on opening day of black powder season and I wanted to take a stand on the side of that hill at the end of the field ... you wanted to hike a mile or so down that old snowmobile trail and hunt those big oak trees around the swamp.”

“Than you remember how that season opener turned out,” I replied.

All summer long we’d been seeing several deer in the clover fields just before dark. When we set up tree stands for the mid-September season opener for archery, we chose to set up along a heavily used deer run that the deer were using to gain entrance at the far end of the main field. Our stand was about two hundred yards off the field.

In early September we had a number of close calls with whitetails, however, by the second week of October the deer weren’t coming into the fields nay more. Mike and I grabbed our bows and spent a weekend scouting deep in that patch of woods and when we stumbled onto a small oak ridge teeming with freshly fallen acorns, we found the deer.

Mike opted to still hunt a large area around the fields on opening day of black powder season, while I chose to make the mile long hike back in to that oak ridge. I still hunted my way all across the ridge, stopping to take stands periodically when I found a spot that offered plenty of shooting lanes.

In spots, there were so many acorns under foot that it felt like I was walking on a bed of marbles. The fresh deer was everywhere, but I went several hours without spotting a deer. Then as I crested a little knoll, I spotted a big deer standing at the edge of a hemlock thicket about a hundred yards away.

I cocked my muzzle loader, settled the cross hairs of my scope on my mark and in a cloud of smoke, filled my firearms tag.

By the time Mike and I had finished talking I had him convinced to abandon the strategy he was going to use during black powder season. He finally agreed that his best chance of filling his tag was to hike back in to that oak ridge and set up overlooking those oak trees that had dropped so many acorns.

“I know getting back to where the acorns are is my best bet to fill my tag,” he admitted. “I’m hoping that as the rut draws near that I’ll be in the right place when a big buck comes in to check out the does.”